With the popularization of wireless Internet Communication devices such as smartphones, mobile communication data demand has increased rapidly by an annual average of about 50% to 200%. To meet the rapidly increasing mobile communication data demand, next mobile communication technologies under development are focused on simplification of mobile communication network structure and miniaturization of cells.
The legacy mobile communication network designed in a centralized topology is comprised of terminals, base stations, and a gateway as shown in FIG. 1. The gateway may be categorized into Mobility Management Entity (MME), Serving Gateway (S-GW), and Packet Data Network Gateway (PDN-GW). The MME manages mobility of terminals, the S-GW processes traffic of the terminal, and the PDN GW relays the traffic of the terminal between an external network and an internal network.
In the centralized network structure, all the traffic transmitted by the terminal is delivered to the external network via the PDN GW; thus, as the number of the terminals connected to the network increases, the traffic load that the PDN GW has to process increases, resulting in packet processing delay problems. If the PDN GW malfunctions or breaks down and fails to provide the service, this is likely to put at risk the whole service of the sub-network.
Also, when it is necessary for the neighboring base stations connected to the S-GW to communicate data, the traffic has to pass the PDN GW to arrive at the neighboring base station and there will be a failure to optimize the traffic path, resulting in packet transmission delay.
Therefore there is a need of research on next generation communication technology that is capable of solving the problems of the centralized network.